Haiti – Something Special

Today I have been living in Haiti for 6 months! I never thought I would be here, never dreamed that this would be my life. I could never have anticipated how amazing it would be or how incredibly difficult, how sweet the joy or how deep the sorrow. I still don’t like to use the word missionary: I’m just a girl who loves Jesus, providing nursing care to babies in Haiti without getting paid. That’s totally different! I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God brought me here to this place at this time and I plan to stay until He tells me otherwise. The feeling of being exactly in the center of God’s will is more than I hoped for, more than I dreamed of. I know this is how it should be. I want to thank each of you for your support, prayers, encouragement, and for sharing in this journey with me.
I’ve been keeping a list of all the “firsts” I have experienced during these 6 months, in no particular order:
1. killed a tarantula
2. lived in another country
3. drove a manual truck
4. told a woman she was going to have a baby
5. told a woman she was not going to have a baby
6. ate goat
7. taught someone how to use a tampon
8. diagnosed illnesses
9. prescribed medication
10. swam in the Caribbean Sea
11. snorkeled
12. scrubbed into the OR and participated in a real surgery
13. learned another language fluently
14. gave a tetanus shot and actually prevented tetanus
15. provided medical care at the scene of a terrible accident
16. got a staph infection
17. mixed a song, choreographed and performed a dance to it
18. rode a motorcycle
19. drove a motorcycle
20. explained menopause to a perimenopausal woman
21. fell in love
22. inserted nasogastric tubes
23. started IVs in infants
24. sutured several wounds
25. watch the decline of a child from HIV to AIDS
26. ate entire meals consisting of nothing but Nutella
27. had a curfew
28. got hives
29. superglued the tip of somone’s finger back on
30. I like round numbers but I can’t think of a number 30